Capital
by obfuscate
Summary: ClaireBender. Short and sour. Come on, people, did you actually think they could work?...I wrote BREAKFAST CLUB FANFIC. Obviously I am not in a position to judge anybody.


It's a mutual agreement.

They ignore each other in the hallways. The earring is passed around and examined by one or two guys in homeroom Bender doesn't really know all that well. They ask where it came from and he knows half the class is expecting _I robbed a bank, what do you think?_ and the other half is expecting _I can't remember which girl it was from _and all of them are expecting a performance so he says very slowly and seriously, "From Vernon, who do you think?"

And somebody croons, "You mean Richard?" and somebody else crows, "As a token of their undying love!" and there is a round of cackles before the bell rings and he's free.

He puts the earring back on.

At lunch she watches him from across the cafeteria and notices that he is polite to the lunch ladies. She doesn't know what to think of this except to wonder if their principal's real mistake is that he expects respect by doling out punishment and not pizza.

He catches her eye and she tells her friends she doesn't feel good and leaves. It isn't a lie; she _doesn't_. She feels like she's doing something one part sick and two parts dangerous, dabbling in things she doesn't know about. He never talks to her about his father. She's glad. She doesn't think she can handle that, it makes her stomach queasy. Like she's getting one back for all those cramps she fakes at gym.

He meets her in the hallway when she should be hurling things at her classmates wearing ugly shorts. Instead she's trading spit with Bender, of all people, and they're shoved into a storage closet and he's got one hand wedged up over what would be her breast if he moved a few inches to the left but the hand has somehow taken a turn into her armpit and he isn't making any move to rectify this because the other one's trying to make it up her skirt (she swallows and simultaneously blesses and curses her tights) and he's making strange whuffling noises into her neck and probably leaving marks and the thing is, she _is_ sick because she wants to leave marks too. Property of Claire Standish branded on his forehead, so he can't make fun of her in classrooms and pretend it's all talk in storage rooms. She's angry at him. Kissing Bender is like that, like fighting almost. She suspects he kisses her the same way and she thinks she knows when he bites her collarbone just a bit too hard and she squeaks and he smiles. She can imagine what he's thinking. You can't make that pitying face at me in classrooms and pretend it didn't happen, Claire. See that? Watch my hand. You're not so pure. You're mine.

She hates him.

He's slumped in the library, staring at the sheet of paper he's supposed to be making into an essay detailing _The Consequences of his Actions_ (and he enumerates the consequences in his head: twenty-five angry jocks, one angry principal, one more Saturday detention, and a car stuffed full of seventeen basketballs. He doesn't exactly know why this was so funny, but it was) when she walks in. He sits up.

She gives him that little-girl shy smile, the one that makes him think, whenever she does it, _Nice try, but I've seen you can put your lipstick on using only your cleavage_.

"Why are you here?" he says, trying for belligerence and getting snotty.

"They finally figured out that I'm incredibly abnormal if I get cramps every single gym period." Another small smile.

Vernon hasn't fixed the door yet. Bender thinks giddily that it would probably be the best thing to happen to him in months—years, even—if Vernon were to open the door and see him getting off with Claire Standish on a desk in the library, but Vernon doesn't open the door and Claire keeps putting her fingers over his mouth. She's wide-eyed and scared but she won't stop him, and he doesn't know why. She quakes a little when his hand reaches the elastic of her panties. He lets go of her and she says, "And I'm a tease?"

He tells her, suddenly weary of the whole ordeal, "Fuck you," but without any real malice. She winces anyway. He can't help it. She's not going to change. He's not going to go anywhere. He knows exactly what she wants him to be, and he thought that she was different (or not even that, it was more of the exquisite revenge that came along with dating _her_), but she's like everyone else: she thinks he's got some goddamn heart of gold behind the crusty exterior. He doesn't. The closest he ever comes, he thinks, is that he doesn't like to see them cry. So he takes off the earring and tosses it contemplatively once or twice in the air. She watches him silently. "I'll be, ah, keeping this, 'right?" he says. "Think of it as capital."

Her mouth presses tight in on itself and her brows draw together and that's when he turns on his heel and walks out. Saturday detention was a fucking useless idea. Nothing good ever came of it. Brian got a C anyway and all that lovely friendship disappeared in actual practice. Allison skipped around fluttering her eyelashes and generally being a parody of Claire while Andrew, oblivious, congratulated himself on having the perfect girlfriend and everyone else congratulated him on that successful removal of his sarcasm detector.

The only person who was really happy was the pawn broker.


End file.
